The overall objective is to replicate the cultural indicators research (Gerbner and Gross, 1976) both developmentally and cross-culturally to test significant elaborations of the basic cultivation hypothesis. While Gerbner and his associates have demonstrated that symbolic patterns in TV content as a whole are linked in a plausibly causal way to biases in the way one views the world, we believe that such cultivation effects probably operate conditionally. Those with less experience of the real world might be more susceptible; those with a different real world experience may reject television as inappropriate for their own construction of reality; those generally skeptical of television may be less affected; or the cultivation effect may require some minimum amount of corroboration from the real world to occur. Besides investigating these conditional elaborations of the cultivation hypothesis, the cross-cultural nature of several tests will require analysis of a valuable content and cultivation data base for Australia (to be collected during the six months prior to this project). The research is thus comprised of an Australian component and an American component. The Australian component will be the analysis of the content and cultivation effects of Australian TV, in connection with a worldwide cultural indicators study being organized by George Gerbner and his associates. Data gathered in the first half of 1978 will be analyzed during the project period. The American component consists of a message systems analysis of local news at three locations in the Midwest, varying in local "real world" violence. A cultivation analysis will be conducted in the three American sites that is identical to the Australian cultivation analysis for cross-cultural comparisons, and that also includes cultivation questions keyed to the local social context. Taken as a whole, the research will provide an important contribution to the international study of the impact of TV on society, including the impact of American TV on other societies.